respect, walk

so the sun did shine the whole weekend. saturday and all i did was clean the house and do some cooking and the laundry as the missus wrangled the excel and the phone and commandered internet connection to two work-related laptops (something is obviously wrong when the number of computers exceeds the number of humans in a house).

sunday and this means that i’m all alone to fend for myself at the gay march. i woke up 5.30 ayem and then taxied to fifth avenue with upper east pinoy friends. first impressions: 1 – new york gays are just like manila gays, they’re as late as late can be. 2 – they’ve been doing this march for 19 years but because of volunteerism, there is no science to it at all. 3 – asian and pacific islander gays tend to bond.

so as a volunteer, the first thing is to get the ID and then the work began (there was a promise of a breakfast but there was no mention at the briefing). we blowed using helium from ginormous tanks balloon after balloon until two hours later, the arch in all the colors of the rainbow was formed and festooned. breakfast was finally called, fresh fruits and some cookies. the best dunkin coffee ever.

so i readed myself to walk in one of the balloons as promised and signed up and confirmed.

but no.

we were shoehorned into holding the very first banner. by a pinoy organizer, no the fucking less.

so i walked what turned out to be 60 blocks under the sun wearing a yellow shirt and held the banner proud and waved like a fruit while playing a pantera song in my head. that’s not the unbelievable part.

when we were comfortable enough after a few blocks, the inevitable question popped up and this should have been a clue: are you gay? it turned out that only one in the 12 of us holding the banner were. are the heteros finally infiltrating the homos? but as the french chick next to me said, this is the most fun ever!

next month, jologizing central park.

balloons. blown before breakfast.

starting to take shape as a counter stands guard.

when you blow it, they will come.

and i thought i volunteered to hold these to the ground.

no, i get to hold this shiny, gay banner and play spot the homo.

the view out front before the march started. maybe we made it to time out NY or the village voice.

the view behind us.

you know you’re not hardcore, unless you live hardcore.

i agree, pussies are awesome, yeah?

hornier than ever.

10 bucks that she’s praying to astaroth.

oh look, there’s the mayor holding the pride flag as he cups his balls.

coming to the flatiron, we passed pentagram design. always thought they’re based in seattle.

approaching ground zero where the tourist trimmed down and the real deal emerged. wild.

eto na!

eto pa. sangrekwa sila!

two hands are hidden from the camera but i swear, they are not on my ass. sort of. look at the press photog on the extreme left. can i pass for a twink?

pics

testing the madam hysteria’s photo apps on stephen king.

above, the original shot on 3 MP.  then FXed as polaroid below:

a helga FX:

there are also other filters like magazine and cinema. we shall see how they look on peking duck later.

madam hysteria

ideas like name studies come in the bath tub unannounced (more so when there’s a bottle of wine but at 11 ayem after a breakfast of cereals, it seemed wrong). and so i thought that coming from the very first iPod called Lucretia, this new iPhone should deviate a little bit. names of diseases came to mind like insomnia and -phobia and then i settled for hysteria. not just any hysteria but a a feminine one and so i baptized the gizmo as “madam hysteria”. lest someone assume it came from a def leppard album and song.

madam hysteria. it has a nice ring to it.

the bad thing about a shiny new toy is that the temptation to load it with apps is relentless. i managed to rake up 25 dolyares worth ranging from pinoy news (on sale) to poe’s collected works (cheap at .99 cents) to camera filters (the lomo and instamatic settings are amazing except for the price). i also bought yet again another NY subway app because one can never have too much maps.

now, if only the godsdamn angels would cease to piss so i can test the camera out in the park. i swear, summer is never coming and any moment now, the waters of the hudson will rise to devour manhattan.

the fragrance of paper

“the angel’s game” never ceases to amaze. i’ve been reading it at night under a lonely lampshade when everyone’s asleep partly for an undivided attention, partly to make it last. it would have been nice to read it outside but the rain just wouldn’t relent.

there are a lot of quotable quotes but two needs to written down:

from chapter 1 and the opening paragraph:

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that will surely outlive him. A writer is condemned to to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

from chapter 30:

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.

nothing could  be truer.

the many, the proud, the gays

summer is officially postponed until further notice but the gay pride parade is unstoppable. this year it is going to be big since the anniversary of the stonewall riots is on its +0 year, 40th i think. plus papa adam lambert, the real winner of american idol will be there. and so i am (one summer goal that i am angling for is to walk for a cause, hopefully in support of cardiovascular health, diabetes, cancer but either i have missed them already or they are yet to occur).

it’s a 50+ block walk and starts at 7 ayem. i just hope the tee shirt isn’t pink, although i have accepted that the chances are a billion to one. well, there’s always a first time.

***

it is still raining almost everyday although the temp has been climbing to the 70s. if this continues, all other park activity that i plan to volunteer to might just go to a puddle. there’s the philharmonic concert. and of course, shakespeare. but mostly i just want to read and write in a bench and watch dogs. and the occasional camel toe.

***

the current iPhone has been sanitized of all thing useless – mostly apps and movies – so that the migration of data will be faster. i hope the package arrives on time and that the activation does not take days, as experienced last friday. i am thinking of the name Helena for the new one, though i am not sure if that is even a mythological name or just plain greek. maybe its time to assign lovecraftian names. or poe. annabel lee seems nice. we shall see.

rocking the cashback

the line at the apple store fifth ave was simply beyond belief. while there is none of the discomfort online, there’s no insta grati either. next week will be the longest week ever.

over the moon

yesterday the sun shone and i got to go out for what seemed like a very, very long time. i got chris’ books from his hotel and times square and then checked out the screenings at empire 25 (arguably, the best bet for philistine-free viewing).

i saw “moon” which stars sam rockwell and is directed by duncan jones. three words: “solaris” it isn’t.

i checked out the web and found two versions of posters. and taglines.

poster 1 (the one that made it to the theaters) with the tagline: 250, ooo miles from home, the hardest thing to face…is yourself. (the ellipsis is the equivalent of a facebook status of “sigh”. as in let’s put some drama and then represent it with a fucking ellipsis.) of course, the art direction rocks.

poster 2 to be forever relegated to collector’s files. the tagline is: the last place you’d ever expect to find yourself. which, judging from the film, is the best of the two.

and to state the obvious, both posters bill sam rockwell way above the title and the rest of the credits.

new books

chris gave me copies of his latest play, our lady of arlegui. finally, i can read it – and give a couple of copies too to my friends. salamat ng o, direk!

when i got back, an amazon box is waiting at the doorstep. the follow to zafon’s “the shadow of the wind”.

it has some gimmick on the dust jacket (which is smaller than the covers and reminds of “the house of leaves”) to reveal a cooler design. i wonder if kindle readers will get the irony if they buy a copy of this book and read it in bits and bytes. 

and finally, bubbles, who, on a good day when she’s just come from the spa after a $150 bath, looks like stephen king. this is not one of those days.

weekodds

• independence day and i am refreshing the tab on the inquirer website every few minutes in the hope that something happen to disrupt arroyo’s rapacious cling to power.

• watched 100 at the MoMA. the tuysilog and crispy pata scenes killed me. we laughed, we cried, we had a good time. saw and had a longish chikka with chris martinez. still the same man i worked with at basic, doing stupid ads for lucky me! and jollibee and it got me thinking how easy advertising was in those days. from the paperworks to the production to the bosses. i never saw chris got mad. ever. or got to the office late. or leave the office early.  he just did his thing and then win some awards without trying, all the while plotting what would be life outside of the job. now it’s great seeing him living it.

• the weather is not letting up. if it rains tomorrow and it drags into monday, it would be three weeks of rain already with the temp in the low 60s. seeing people in scarves and leather jackets somehow feels wrong. i want the al gore kind of summer already!

• the guest dog has discovered the power of being cute and is now sleeping on the bed.

• found through NY times the cheapest airfare ever to schipol and i hope the plan to jologize the europa and drink some stella from its source pushes through within the fall or next spring. maybe i need to cut off my amazon account to finance my allowance for this trip and start doing some serious dogwalking again.

• today, all analog TV stopped working. finally, the time has come for HD digital broadcast of all stations. aside from clearer pictures more headaches are expected to follow.

a rip in the matrix

dream 1 yesterday, siesta time, upper east white noise and bubbles’ (guest dog for 10 days) tiny feet on the floor doing the patrol:

i ride the last car of the subway and it was an open car like the top deck of tour buses. at the last stop before it heads out of manhattan, i saw sunny. i said hi and she said hello and when i asked her where she is headed, sunny said she is meeting billy somewhere. i wake up.

dream 2 today, siesta time, U2 on the iPhone and bubbles’ footfalls on patrol:

i enter macy’s and on the other side of the revolving door is rica, the yulo. she asks me to take a picture of her. i take a picture and we are really causing a traffic jam. she asks for one more as i always squeeze the zoom button rather than the shot button. people are really crowding now. she goes away with her camera a bit disappointed. i wake up.

i don’t know what these mean.

mindfucks

thanks to sunshine cinemas and angelika film center, i am having my share of psycho porn.

this year’s *hard candy* are:

the girlfriend experience by steven soderbergh with the tagline “see it with someone you ****”

and there’s downloading nancy by johan renck. the tagline is “nancy needs someone to complete her” even though the sundance line “the most controversial film you will see this year” was placed in the posters. we shall see. ooops, it also stars rufus sewell.